Price: Available from various CD-ROM vendors or
free via download from the Debian web site

Reviewer: Stephanie Black

There's a lot to be said for an organization that not only
depends on volunteers to develop its distribution and continually
work to improve it, but acknowledges the contributions of those who
participate in its growth.

In July of this year, Debian lost one of its more celebrated
developers, Joel “Espy” Klecker, to Duchenne's Muscular
Dystrophy. Debian, true to its philosophy, has recognized Joel's
vast contributions by dedicating the Debian 2.2 release to his
memory. (The written dedication can be viewed at
ftp.debian.org/debian/doc/dedication-2.2.txt.)

The distribution itself is beginning to display the same kind
of generosity. Debian's reputation has been further from the
“novice-user” category than many distributions; this is slowly
beginning to change. From installation to usage to tweaking, Debian
2.2 is a release that is fun for the techies and, well, much less
of a Waterloo for novice Debian users.

Setup and Installation

Hardware Profile:

500MHz K6/2

64MB RAM

9.2G Quantum Fireball

3-Com ADSL modem

SoundBlaster Live!

Diamond Viper 770 Video

DLink 530-TX NIC

kernel 2.4.0test8

There is all manner of documentation and clear instruction
for obtaining the required boot, root and driver disks with which
to install Debian (available at
www.debian.org/releases/2.2/i386/install).
There is also a caveat about expecting perfect boot disks in one
go. Good floppy disks make things easier and faster.

While not all users have DSL, the network installation of
Debian proves itself to be sturdy and straightforward, even when
using a command-line interface. Within a half hour, the
installation was complete. This is probably the most significant
change in Debian: easy download and installation via FTP.

The user is offered a choice of simple or advanced
installation: the former provides a quick installation of some of
the more commonly used packages through a selection of application
types (e.g., C++ Development, GNOME games, etc.); the latter allows
the more seasoned Debian user to select individual packages.
dselect (which, as of this
writing, is to be usurped by a new installer in future releases)
provides dependency checking and simplifies additional package
retrieval and configuration.

Configuration

Generally, dselect takes care of configuring most packages,
allowing the user both the option of keeping the .deb packages and
of setting up a running system. In an FTP download, the pertinent
network configuration takes place prior to installation for obvious
reasons. For some “non-free” packages, the user will be required
to download additional software from sites hosting the original
software first, such as the case of Real Player or IBM's JDK, and
then obtain the remainder of the package via apt-get before
configuration can take place. It's a bit detailed but worth it for
the software. In addition, there are some packages that aren't
permitted to be distributed in anything other than source packages.
These require building; the process was, in the case of Pine,
clearly laid out in the README. The resulting packages are then
built into .deb files installable by dpkg.

I'm a bit on the lazy side and don't like wasting good
prewritten code. There are some scripts included with Fetchmail
that preclude much of the headaches that some associate with
setting up a mail client. These scripts are found in
</usr/doc/fetchmail/contrib> and prove extremely useful to
those new to, or uncomfortable with, MTA's.

Pros and Cons

Debian has a long-lived reputation for stability that has
made it attractive to companies like Storm, Libranet and Corel, all
three of which have capitalized on Debian's lack of easy
installation. It's apparent that those who are installing Potato
from a CD are likely to run into problems with, among other things,
disks that have errors on them. I haven't heard if this is strictly
the case with official CDs; if not, Debian may want to look at
putting QA restrictions on those producing unofficial versions of
the installation media. The network installation has improved
tremendously, however, both in speed and security of the
download.

The 4.x series of XFree86 is not included in this release,
but the developers are in the process of adding it to the next
release, or so I've been told. This would be a marked improvement;
the current version of 3.3.6x is, at best, erratic. Xservers don't
work (and don't not-work) with any kind of consistency. There are
still issues with GLX (and the drivers thereof) for certain cards.
RIVA-based cards (G-Matrox, among others) are rumored to be wanting
more of the support provided in the XFree86 4.x series. To be fair,
this problem is not specific to Debian.

The selection of packages in 2.2 is rivaled only by that of
SuSE Linux and predictably runs the same risks—so many choices, so
many dependencies and so many package conflicts. The choice is
good, but several of the packages are in need of updating. This is
especially obvious in the vast numbers of libraries included, many
of which are present for nothing more than backward compatibility.
(Anyone willing to volunteer to fix this?) The variety in the kinds
of applications included is stellar, from math and science
applications to games, editors and GUIs. The “corporates” don't
have much to rejoice about in Debian, but there are certainly lots
of tools and toys for developers, graphic artists, academics and
hobbyists.

Debian isn't intended for the absolute Linux newbie. Help is
available, however, from the users, list
<debian-user@lists.debian.org>, which is quite active; most
list members are willing to show new “Debs” the ropes. Be warned:
traffic on this list is extensive (upwards of 500 messages
daily).